4 Do not be like your ancestors when the prophets in the past cried to them: YahwehSabaoth says this: Turn back from your evil ways and evil deeds -- they would not listen or pay attention to me -- Yahweh declares.

5 Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live for ever?

6 But did not my words and statutes, with which I had charged my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors just the same?" ' So they repented and said, 'Yahweh Sabaoth has treated us as he resolved to do, and as our ways and deeds deserved.'

7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month (the month of Shebat), in the second year of Darius, the word of Yahweh was addressed to the prophetZechariah (son of Berechiah), son of Iddo, as follows,

8 'I had a vision during the night. There was a man riding a red horse standing among the deep-rooted myrtles; behind him were other horses-red, chestnut and white.

9 I said, "What are these, my lord?" And the angel who was talking to me said, "I will show you what they are."

10 The man standing among the myrtles then replied, "Those are they whom Yahweh has sent to patrol the world."

11 They reported to the angel of Yahweh as he stood among the myrtles, "We have been patrolling the world, and indeed the whole world is still and at peace."

12 The angel of Yahweh then spoke and said, "Yahweh Sabaoth, how long will you wait before taking pity on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, on which you have inflicted your anger for the past seventy years?"

13 Yahweh then replied with kind and comforting words to the angel who was talking to me.

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